“There might be a lot of noise around the show, and people might love the pilot, but it might completely and totally sputter and burn out,” Damon Lindeolf told New York Times Magazine about “The Leftovers.” “We have not written a script or produced an episode yet where I go: ‘Booyah! That’s what I’m talking about!’ They’ve all been a gargantuan struggle.” And indeed, the first episode of HBO’s latest hopeful, won’t make anyone exclaim in excitement. Running 75 minutes long, much of the pilot is mere placesetting, establishing the scope and world the show will take place in, and the characters that will be our conduit into something that, at least from the outset, will be drawing comparisons to “Lost.”

“There might be a lot of noise around the show, and people might love the pilot, but it might completely and totally sputter and burn out,” Damon Lindeolf told New York Times Magazine about “The Leftovers.” “We have not written a script or produced an episode yet where I go: ‘Booyah! That’s what I’m talking about!’ They’ve all been a gargantuan struggle.” And indeed, the first episode of HBO’s latest hopeful, won’t make anyone exclaim in excitement. Running 75 minutes long, much of the pilot is mere placesetting, establishing the scope and world the show will take place in, and the characters that will be our conduit into something that, at least from the outset, will be drawing comparisons to “Lost.”

Forever a weight around Lindelof’s neck, the parallels between this HBO venture and his ABC hit series with the controversial ending won’t be unwarranted. There’s the premise alone, which starts three years after an unexplained event causes 2% of the Earth’s population to vanish one ordinary, October 14th afternoon. And leading us through the story is a damaged male lead, this time played by Justin Theroux, as police chief and single father Kevin Garvey. There’s an oddball cult known as Guilty Remnant causing trouble around Mapleton, New York where the show is set. There’s another group of people led by eerily charismatic mystic Wayne (Paterson Joseph), who oversees a well guarded compound. And we haven’t mentioned the wild packs of roving dogs, hallucinations, book references (I expect Albert Camus’ “The Stranger” to jump in sales) and more. Intentionally or not, Lindelof has saddled himself with another show that opens up lots of questions, and provides some clues, with some more compelling than others.

At the center of the show is the three pronged world of Kevin Garvey. The police chief himself is barely clinging to the job his father also once had. Withheld until the end of the episode for dramatic effect (it doesn’t quite work), we learn that he has suffered a fate worse than a family member mysteriously disappearing. His wife Laurie (Amy Brenneman) has gone and joined the aforementioned cult, referred to as GRs, leaving him to raise his teenage daughter Jill (a Kristen Stewart-ish Margaret Qualley) alone. She’s going through problems of her own, lashing out at classmates and friends, and idly slipping into the kind of teenage parties we only see on TV, this time one that updates spin-the-bottle to include fucking and choking (and the “bottle” is an app on an iPhone). It’s a game which leads her friend Aimee (Emily Meade) to sleep with the boy Jill has a crush on, but what ultimately is troubling the young girl has little to do with high school romance. And then there’s Kevin son’s and Jill’s brother Tom (Chris Zylka), who works as a driver for the mysterious Wayne, bringing those who seek his counsel to the compound.

Much of the show is spent on the three — who are conveniently tied for narrative purposes to every major extension of the plot — and it’s a mixed bag. Kevin Garvey is easily the most intriguing and perhaps most haunted of any of the characters. He trusts the GRs very little, and with the episode centered around Mapleton’s plans for a “Heroes Day” tribute to those who departed, his icy clashes with the mayor, whom he advises to cancel the commemoration, are pretty terrific. Jill’s sour travails are a little less interesting, if only because much of it feels so rote and the aforementioned party seemingly included if only to meet the HBO quota for cable sleaze (even without nudity, but with oral sex). Her arc is ultimately one that reveals she’s simply unmoored thanks to her mother up and leaving the house. She has lost her faith in humanity in general, and when she buries a dead dog found in the trunk of her Dad’s car (long story short: dogs who witnessed the event are rumored to have gone “primal”; the cadaver is there because Kevin’s plans to bring it to the rightful owner after it was shot by a roving dog killer failed and he forgot it was there) she eulogizes it by saying, “We’re sorry you got stuck with us.”

As for Tom, he’s clearly trying to find something resembling an answer by working for Wayne, but it’s an environment suffused with awe and fear. When Wayne visits Tom in the middle of the night to warn him to stay away from a girl he’s been flirting with on the compound, it’s doubled with messages of a vision he’s received from his vanished son. It’s a prophecy that on the fast approaching third anniversary, “the grace period is over.” It’s easily the most chilling moment in the pilot and that prediction will soon come to pass. And that will be thanks to the GRs.